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The big news towards the end of the week was "stupid things Republicans say," of course, but we're saving most of that for the "Talking Points" part of the program.
So the question must also be asked: Do you support the concept of polygamy? If so, why? If not, why not?
My conversion to the cause of supporting gay rights (in general) happened much earlier, I should mention. This doesn't excuse my previous stance on gay marriage -- in fact, it makes it somewhat worse. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I'll start at the beginning, instead.
I can't help but wonder if people are getting the cases slightly backwards. In short, I think the Defense Of Marriage Act (DOMA) case is going to prove to be more important than the Proposition 8 case from California.
No matter what the Supreme Court decides, after hearing this week's arguments, I think America has reached the tipping point on the subject of gay marriage. I say that because I think that gay marriage is going to win, in the end -- even if the Supreme Court ducks the issue this year. As civil rights battles go, the country has moved extraordinarily fast to where we find ourselves now: the point of no return. Victory for gay rights activists is not assured this time around, but it should now be seen as almost inevitable. Which makes this a very historic point in American progress.
Welcome to the 250th Friday Talking Points column!
Ten years ago this week, America went to war in Iraq for the second time. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11, but that certainly didn't stop us from invading. Jingoism ran high in the supposedly-liberal press, and only a few voices were raised against the war in Congress. But plenty of others have been rehashing the whole run-up to the Iraq War, and plenty have been busy this week pointing out all the mistakes that were made along the way. I leave all that to others, though, for now. Instead, what I am left thinking ten years after the initial invasion is how badly America's record is when it comes to cleaning up afterwards.
Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus is in the news this week, for his "autopsy" report on the Republican Party in the 2012 election. Priebus and a few other hardy Republican souls took months to examine what went wrong for the party, and what should be done to set things right for the next time around. Their prescription for change, unfortunately, is to change how their message is delivered rather than to change much in the way of Republican policies. I'm certainly not the first to point this out, but this idea works out to exactly the same as what you are left with when you remove the vowels from the national party chairman's name: RNC PR BS.
Saint Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, lived in the fifth century A.D., and he came to Ireland as a proselytizer for Christianity. That is about the sum total of the known, verifiable facts about Patrick. The rest is myth. Since such mythologizing began only a few hundred years after his death (which happened on March 17, by the way), these myths of Patrick are much more widely known than the thin shreds of his real history (which are limited to two surviving letters written by Patrick in Latin). Besides, it's much more fun to sit around telling these tales over a pint of Guinness than to dig up actual facts. Even if the tales are pure blarney.
Welcome to the Ides of March, now known as the day after "Pi Day." If you need to look up either of those references, may I humbly suggest that your pop-cultural education may not be quite wide enough. The Wides of March? Maybe I'm just being too snarky -- yet another of the Snides of March, perhaps.